Gabriel and Clancy integrate themselves into society on Terrina - in one of the flourishing cities - and things are going well, until Gabriel has a tense encounter at Bertram's informal reception. Gabriel is worried; the incident, dangerous for a moment, seemed artificial, forced upon him to initiate someone's hidden agenda. And he has yet to encounter Saigo...

Perhaps not destined to be an all-time favorite SF novel of mine, but I'm enjoying it a lot. We'll see how good it is in the second half.